Infantilia tantum

Singularia tantum and pluralia tantum in grammar are nouns that take only a singular or only a plural form, respectively. You can’t have a singular scissor or plural beef. What we can and do have is an infantilia tantum of politicians, analysts, and, sadly, corporate executives. Yes, I made up the word infantilia.

The highest concentration of infantile individuals is, of course, in Europe. I have my hypothesis about how we got here but I’ll leave it for another post. For the purposes of this one, it would suffice to share this Bloomberg headline from Thursday: EU Parliament Rolls Back ESG Rules After Widespread Pressure.

If you don’t read past the headline you would be justified in assuming, as I did for a second, that sanity and mental maturity are making a comeback and politicians are starting to realise the green policies are not working as expected and hoped for. But no, neither sanity nor mental maturity have made a comeback. Our MEPs have caved to U.S. pressure, we learn from the Bloomberg story, the pressure being applied with regard to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive that I loving call the bra size directive.

The directive was supposed to force all exporters to the EU to track their emissions everywhere and report them along with the companies’ efforts to reduce them. Obviously, U.S. oil and gas producers were having none of that, as were the good people from QatarEnergy, which they made clear. Repeatedly. Exxon threatened to quit Europe altogether if the bra size directive was adopted. European Big Oil also woke up from its nap and warned that the directive could have devastating consequences on Europe’s energy security by means of diverting LNG cargoes from the madhouse that the continent has become.

The CSDDD is now on its deathbed as the European Parliament voted to shrink its scope to just 8%, yes, 8% of the original number of companies. Forgive me for quoting Brussels reporting but it’s quite priceless, I promise.

“The [EP’s] position dramatically reduces the number of companies covered by the CSRD with a new threshold of 1,750 employees and €450 million in revenues, and leaves only the largest companies within the scope of the CSDDD, with a threshold of 5,000 employees and revenues of over €1.5 billion.” That is not all, however.

“Companies below the scope will be protected from requests by companies for information greater than that set out in voluntary sustainability reporting standards. Additionally, companies covered by the CSDDD are directed to rely on information that is already available, instead of systematically requesting information from smaller value chain companies, and to only request additional information from their smaller business partners as a last resort.”

The cherry on top: “Parliament’s adopted position also eliminates the need for companies to prepare a transition plan to make their business model compatible with the Paris Agreement.”

Here’s the infantilia tantum’s process: have an idea that would make a huge and very expensive mess — discover with amazement that it would make a huge and very expensive mess — do not quit idea but take its mess-making, expensive, teeth out — assume you’ve saved face and breathe a sigh of relief that the gas will keep flowing.

Meanwhile, in response to one of you asking on Monday whether anyone ever took the IEA’s reports seriously, Goldman Sachs obliged, by revising its oil demand projections. The bank — the investment bank; one of the biggest investment banks in the world — previously expected oil demand to peak in 2034. Now it has moved that to 2040. Goldman is always the first to flip-flop on its energy predictions. More will follow, exposing themselves to the world as not very smart or mentally mature.

Saving the best for last because I respect you, we have Germany’s parliament voting to spend 6.5 billion euro in taxpayer money annually for four years to keep industrial electricity costs under some control and extend the duration of tax breaks that will additionally lower costs. Reuters attributed the high electricity costs in Germany to “inflated […] transmission fees, levies and taxes,” without specifying the nature of these fees, levies and taxes.

So. Germany’s political class has been working hard to kill the economy for 20 years or so and when it finally saw the fruit of its labours, the current crop in power decided it doesn’t look half as good as it should’ve. So, after spending many, many billions on making electricity as expensive as physically possible, German politicians are now going to spend more billions to keep the non-working system that made electricity so expensive as installed by their predecessors and maybe start looking for nearby nuclear power plants in neighbouring countries to blow up. While building the strongest army in Europe, no less. On a voluntary basis, too.

The infantilism champions, however, are not in Germany, not this week. Friends, neighbours, fellow sailors on board the Common Sense, I present to you Estonia’s foreign minister who gave China an ultimatum, saying it should quit supporting Russia if it wants to have good relations with the mighty Baltic state (population 1.37 million, GDP $27.57 billion), and the entire Bulgarian government, which plans to (illegally) seize control of the Lukoil refinery that supplies 65% of the country’s fuels and then sell it to anyone interested and pocket the money. I would’ve checked the news from the UK but I need to go buy some jerrycans.

P.S. A consolation prize goes to Ember for the following: “Energy think-tank Ember forecast in a new report this week that electricity supplied by fossil fuels would not grow at all this year, and all new demand would be met by renewable sources.”